The Raytracing workbench is essentially obsolete. New development is happening in the Render Workbench, which is intended as its replacement. This workbench is fully programmed in Python so it is much easier to extend.

Nevertheless, the information in this page is generally useful for the new workbench, as both modules work basically in the same way.

Workflow of the Raytracing Workbench; the workbench prepares a project file from a given template, and then calls an external program to produce the actual rendering of the scene. The external renderer can be used independently of FreeCAD.

Tools

Project tools

These are the main tools for exporting your 3D work to external renderers.

Preferences

Tutorials

Creating a povray file manually

The utility tools described above allow you to export the current 3D view and all of its content to a Povray file. First, you must load or create your CAD data and position the 3D View orientation as you wish. Then choose "Utilities → Export View..." from the raytracing menu.

You will be asked for a location to save the resulting *.pov file. After that you can open it in Povray and render: